Authors: David B. Williams
The giant slab of travertine looks like a jumbled mix of straws, melted wax paper, and spaghetti except that the straws are
fossilized reeds, the waxy sheets are fossilized rafts of bacteria, and the spaghetti strands are fossilized mosses and algae.
White to translucent calcite has filled in some reed tubes either completely or enough to leave only a small hole in the center.
Most are hollow, though, and wide enough to stick a pencil into.
The fibrous moss and algal strands cross and crisscross like
a spiderweb.
As with the leaf panels, there is a distinct feeling of water; you can envision a quiet swamp with reeds pushing up through
a surface coating of bacteria and moss.
Some of the reeds stand upright.
Others tilt and overlap.
Perhaps birds or insects
alit on the hollow green stems, seeking a meal of the invertebrates that lived on the mosses.
(Coincidentally, on either side
of the wetland panel are two much smaller panels, each with a fossil of a ten-inch-long feather.) You can almost hear the
calling of frogs and smell the pungent decay of vegetation.
The large brown panel is exquisite, life in a wetland caught in
the act of fossilization.
Another texture at the Getty seems almost too ephemeral to have become rock.
The surface of many blocks is honeycombed with
one-eighth-inch-wide circles, but bees didn’t produce the pockets.
Instead the texture resulted from solidified gas bubbles,
basically solid foam.
As the bubbles floated through the water, calcite coated the surface and froze the diaphanous effervescence
as a permanent feature.
Because of the way the guillotine split the travertine, it chopped open the gas bubbles.
Calcite can also accumulate on the surface of ponds, building up playing-card-thin gossamer rafts.
As happens with the bubbles,
rafts can be blown across a pond and collect in thick layers, which in stone look like strewn sheets of phyllo dough.
The
raft-rich panels are widespread at the Getty and many also feature fossilized stems of green algae that resemble very thin,
salt-coated pretzel sticks.
Folk and Chafetz’s shrub forests are visible at the Getty, too.
The best way to see them is to take a seat on one of the numerous
travertine benches scattered throughout the complex.
Leftovers from past centuries of cutting at Tivoli, the rough blocks
enthralled Richard Meier when he visited the quarries; he thought they would contrast well with the more formal, cut travertine.
If you look at the sides of the benches, which were sliced in the traditional perpendicular-to-bedding manner, you can find
many layers rich in year after year of shrubs.
You can also see the shrubs in plane or top-down view on the walls: Look for
broccoli- or cauliflower-type patterns.
The seething environment at the mouth of the spring, as opposed to the quiet of shrub-generating pools, spawned egg- or pea-shaped
balls, known as ooids or pisoids.
They form as calcite gloms together in bands like a tightly packed snowball.
Because the
constant agitation knocks the calcite masses together, corners get removed, leaving behind the characteristic round balls.
At the Getty they look like small mushroom caps.
This diverse array of textures exemplifies an important geologic theme—depositional environments are always far more complex
than how most geologists describe them.
For example, I can make the simple observation that the Tivoli travertine formed in
lakes and ponds, but in reality those bodies of water have an incredible diversity.
Water temperature, depth, clarity, chemistry,
and gas content all vary, as do daily and seasonal conditions, surrounding vegetation, and long-term climate changes.
Out of this heterogeneous landscape came fossil leaves, honeycombs of gas bubbles, and a petrified wetland.
No two panels
are alike because no two parts of nature are alike.
Rock excels as a building material because it bestows on buildings a complex
beauty not found in materials such as glass, steel, concrete, or titanium.
Each of these materials serves a specific purpose
and can be beautiful in its own manner, but none prompts you to linger and look in detail.
One metal Meier panel is just like
the next metal Meier panel.
Stone bewitches because it is alive—a living, breathing material that changes gracefully over time.
The softer Salem Limestone
erodes around its harder fossils, creating a display case for the holy trinity of the Mississippian.
Lichen and mosses colonize
brownstone and contrast with another late comer, a blue black patina of varnish.
Coquina weathers to an ashy gray and acquires
hanging gardens of grasses and flowers.
And the Getty travertine has already changed, losing some of its beige and becoming
whiter.
None of the human-made materials has a vitality like stone.
People further relate to rock as a building material because they intuitively sense the link between stone and the earth around
them.
Even if they can’t tell the difference between granite and marble, they know that building stone has a history and a
story.
No manufactured building material can provide the deep connection to place that stone does.
Meier succeeded in his goal of connecting the Getty complex to the landscape, principally because of the rough-cut travertine.
Similar to what happened at Robinson Jeffers’s wonderful Tor House and Hawk Tower, the stone gives the buildings an organic
feel.
Meandering through the grounds feels like walking on a rocky hillside, seeking out beautiful fossils, attractive textures,
and strange shapes.
A friend who works at the Getty says that whenever he has rock-climbing friends visit him they always
want to put up climbing routes on the walls.
(It’s a good thing I didn’t have my rock hammer.)
You can, however, spend time rapping the panels with your knuckles.
Los Angeles’ seismic history led to a decision to bolt
each panel about three-eighths of an inch away from each surrounding panel and from its concrete backing.
This allows the
panels to move during an earthquake.
It also met Meier’s contradictory goal of having stone that looks weighty and thick and
is non-load-bearing.
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In addition, hanging the panels resulted in an unplanned aspect of the Getty—music.
Each panel produces a tone when you rap
it with your knuckles, and because the panels vary in thickness, each tone is distinct.
No other building produces such music.
Animals have also taken to the travertine.
None has gone as far as the pigeons at the Castillo de San Marcos that started
to eat the stone, but brown and blue speckled lizards regularly cruise the walls.
In several areas, where the travertine touches
the ground, holes contain the flotsam of insects and spiders.
Travertine helps make the Getty complex more accessible.
The size and layout of the buildings are daunting and confusing but
the travertine brings the focus back to a human scale.
The stone engages visitors and encourages them to slow down and look
more carefully.
And even to touch.
On one of the docent-led tours, our guide showed us a panel with fossil leaves.
They were
dark brown from all the fingers that had stroked them.
The Getty and the Colosseum share many similarities.
Both were built on a scale to impress the visitor and dominate the site.
Both required years of labor and hundreds of workers, although the Romans finished their project three years faster.
Both
now attract tourists by the busload, except at the Getty the tourists get a tram ride, too.
Both are based on geometric shapes,
the Getty on the square and the Colosseum on the arch, each repeated over and over again, giving the buildings their sight
lines, their gravitas, their signature shapes.
Ultimately, though, travertine is what unites the Getty and the Colosseum.
Both needed the stone in order to succeed as buildings.
The Getty really didn’t
need
it: Meier could have found another stone that would have allowed him to connect to place, but he needed the travertine aesthetically.
The stone’s textures, fossils, and colors give his buildings life, and travertine’s Roman allusions connect the Getty to antiquity.
The Colosseum had to have travertine, too.
No other contemporary material would have worked as well structurally.
Tuff was
too weak to support great loads and lava too hard to cut into precise arches, columns, and capitals.
The Romans had the ability
to import granite and marble, but not on the scale or at the cost required for the Colosseum.
They also had concrete and did
use it for vaults, but it had a tendency to creep or deform under great loads.
And the nascent brick industry was unable to
provide enough bricks for the building.
The Colosseum, the oldest building I visited, and the Getty, the newest, illustrate thematic end points central to the story
of building stone.
Builders started by exploiting their local geology and working with stone easy to carve and cut.
They also
considered whether and how the stone could provide structural support, especially with ambitious builders and architects,
who wanted to build bigger and bigger.
As time progressed, however, transportation replaced geology as a central driving force.
Building decisions revolved around what a builder could get shipped to a building site.
Good rail or boat service usually
dictated this round of decision making.
Finally down the road, money replaced transportation as the central part of the equation.
The decision now revolves around how much money a builder is willing to shell out.
These themes of geology, transportation, money, and fashion play out repeatedly across time and geography.
They reveal the
timeless power of building stone and how we have used and continue to use it to convey sentiments as pedestrian or as grand
as we desire them to be.
For as long as humans have sought shelter, we have used stone.
It is as elemental to our lives as
water and fire and allows us to mark our place in the world.
From ancient Rome to Los Angeles to Mars, travertine exemplifies the complex stories of building stone.
It is a symbol.
It
is history.
It is science.
It is a story in stone that one can see every day if we take the time to look, to ask questions,
to wonder about the world around us.
Like a conglomeratic rock, this book was assembled from many sources.
One of the great pleasures in writing
Stories in Stone
was my interaction with geologists, historians, preservationists, and quarry owners and workers.
They shared their passion,
answered my endless questions, took me out in the field, and gave me samples.
I will try to list all who helped but know I
will inadvertently omit a few.
I apologize for doing so.
And, of course, any interpretations, errors, and opinions about their
data are mine.
For the chapter on brownstone, my field time in quarry,museum, and the streets of Brooklyn with Alex Barrett, Alison Guinness,
Mike Meehan, and Steve Sauter was essential, fun, and eye opening.
The chapter on the Quincy Granite was the first one I wrote.
The support of Jim Skehan, Tom Mahlstedt, Dick Bailey, Vic Campbell, and Richard Naylor set the tone for the rest of the book;
they were generous with their time and patient in responding to my questions.
Aaron Yoshinobu’s fascination and passion for
Robinson Jeffers, Tor House, and Hawk Tower were contagious and motivating.
Dan Rea, Sarah Dodd, and Mark Gross of Cold Spring
Granite Company went out of their way to help me see the Morton Gneiss and the Cold Spring mill.
I also had helpful and numerous
conversations on those ancient Minnesota rocks with Pat Bickford and Terry Boerboom: They helped clarify the science of this
most challenging of stone.
When I began work on the coquina chapter, I received a wonderful e-mail from Leslee Keys.
She made me feel at home, far away
from mine, especially with that ice-cold gin and tonic.
Joe Brehm’s insightful tour of the Castillo de San Marcos made the
fort and its history come to life.
I also enjoyed a fascinating discussion and tour of the Florida Natural History Museum
with Roger Portell.
It is one of the best natural history museums I have seen.
As a native of Kentucky, I had some hesitation in heading north into rival Hoosier territory, but I need not have.
Jim Owens
made sure I met the right people and saw the quarries and mills.
Will Bybee and Andy Chaney graciously opened up their quarry
and mill for me, and Todd Thompson and Brian Keith provided the details I needed on the geology of the Salem Limestone.
Of
all the people I met while working on this book, few gave me as much help as Ruby Wilde and Carolyn Peyton; they tracked down
obscure documents, regaled me with stories of early Lamar, and, finally, when I got to town, drove me, fed me, and introduced
me to everyone I needed to meet, especially Greg and Val Emick, without whom I would never have seen petrified wood in the
field, and Dorothy Smith, who provided such a memorable connection to the little gas station of her youth.
My dear friends John Horning and Terry Flanagan were great travel companions in Italy.
From strolling to drinking wine to
seeing endless rocks, they were enthusiastic, supportive, and fun.
I was also lucky to spend an amazing day with Paolo Conti,
whose knowledge of and driving ability in Carrara are unrivaled.
And without John Logan, William Wallace, and Roy Kligfield
sharing their knowledge of Carrara marble and Michelangelo, I would still be trying to understand what I saw there and what
Michelangelo did with the stone.
I think I talked to more people about slate than I did about any other stone.
Three stand out for their patience, vast depth
of knowledge, and enthusiasm: Laurel Grabel, Jack Epstein, and Jeri Jones.
In Italy I was fortunate that Fabrizio Mariotti showed me his family mill and quarry.
He also gave me my favorite rock.
Eric
Doehne and Michael Palladino helped me see the Getty on a human scale.
Travertine has had a long history, both geologically
and culturally, and what I know of it comes from Robert Folk and Marie Jackson.
I was only able to tell the story of NASA
and nannobacteria because of Chris Romanek.
Many friends and family put me up and put up with me while I traveled.
Thanks to Mike Buckley and Megan Kelso, Nancy and Ira
Horowitz, Tim and Amy Johnson-Grass, Niki Lamberg and Adam Shyevitch, Bob and Carol Levine, Janet Protas, and Ruth Schneider.
Several friends read chapters and made helpful suggestions: Megan Kelso, Jeff Moline, Andy Nettell, Scott Pierce, Jenny Schwarz,
Peter Stekel, Scott and Muff Wanek, Irene Wanner, and David Weld.
I appreciate their honesty and support.
I interviewed and talked to dozens of people, some of whom appear and many who don’t appear in the book.
All of those discussions
and correspondence helped make up the conglomerate of this book.
Thank you to Daniel Abrahamson, Tony Angell, David Barbeau,
Kevin Barto, Jim Blachowicz, Amy Brier, Kathleen Burnham, Henry Chafetz, Kent Condie, Dennis Copeland, Steve Cummings, Karen
D’Arcy, Kelly Dixon, Mihai Ducea, Peter Dryzewiecki, Bob Emick, Dale Enochs, Lori East, Clayton Fant, Tom Farrell, Tim Fisher,
Bruce Fouke, Tom Gaston, Elspeth Gordon, Kirk Johnson, Doug Jones, Brenda Kirkland, Lynne Lancaster, Peter Le-Tourneau, David
Leverington, Greg McHone, Doug McNeill, Virginia Miller, Paula Noble, Irvy Quitmyer, Emma Rainforth, Tony Randozzo, Mark Schmitz,
Dale Setterholm, Jim Stagner, Kevin Stewart, Bly Straube, Basil Tikoff, Charles Tingley, Eleanor Toews, Alex Vardamis, and
Kate Wellspring.
When I first started to work on this book, I was lucky enough to team up with my agent, Brettne Bloom, whose help in molding
my proposal was essential.
Jackie Johnson was a patient, thoughtful, and insightful editor.
She asked the right questions,
found inconsistencies, and tightened my sometimes abstruse science.
I also benefited from the support, enthusiasm, and guidance of Ivan and Carol Doig and David Laskin.
I cannot thank you enough
for the many years of friendship and inspiration.
And finally, through many walks and talks, some tears, and lots of shots of tequila, I couldn’t have written this book without
my wife, Marjorie Kittle, and her support, humor, love, and editing.